The Secret Locative Case

July 3, 2020 2:10 AM

Did classical or archaic Greek have a locative case or is this an in-joke in The Secret History?

Is the following passage from The Secret History an error, an in-joke, or actually correct?

"I don't know about that," Camilla was saying. "If the Greeks are sailing to Carthage, it should be accusative. Remember? Place whither? That's the rule."
"Can't be." This was Bunny [...] "It's not place whither, it's place to. I put my money on the ablative case."
[...]
"Wait," said Charles [...] "Look at this. They're not just sailing to Carthage, they're sailing to attack it."
[...]
"Look at the next sentence. We need a dative."
[...]
"Absolutely. Epi to karchidona
[Snipped some stuff where Bunny gets Latin and Greek mixed up]
Richard: "I'm sorry, but would the locative case do?"
"Locative?" said Charles.
"Just add zde to karchido," I said. "I think it's zde. If you use that you won't need a preposition, except the epi if they're going to war. It implies 'Carthage-ward,' so you won't have to worry about a case either."
Charles looked at his paper, then at me. "Locative?" he said. "That's pretty obscure."
"Are you sure it exists for Carthage?" said Camilla.
I hadn't thought of this. "Maybe not," I said. "I know it does for Athens"

[Henry then later says of this] "Hmm. archaic locative. Very Homeric"

I'm confused by this but that's possibly because my I never studied enough Homer. PIE has a locative case which got folded into the classical Greek dative case but the characters have dismissed using the dative case so it's clearly not the "locative" use of the dative.

What are they actually doing here? Is this a particle used to create a verbal neologism to mean, "Carthage-wards"? (Implied by not having to decline it) Or is this actually an application of an archaic locative case from Homer?

Is this actually an error and meant to be a joke about how they don't quite know as much as they think they do?

posted by atrazine to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Best answer: I don’t remember it either, but Wikipedia claims it exists.

Looking up Iliad 24.401, we indeed find h)w=qen which Perseus’ word analysis tool claims is an epic adverb, indeclinable. But the translation is pretty clearly locativey.

And a google books search gave this reference which is trying to reconstruct a protoGreek locative via comparative philology.

So yeah, looks like a thing. Also looks like a pretty rare thing, although my Homer days are too long ago to have any idea how rare.
posted by nat at 3:47 AM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yes, there was a postfixed particle -δε meaning “towards”. See, for instance, the well-known textbook Athenaze. Or the word οἴκαδε. Technically, it is an allative, not a locative.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-δε#Ancient_Greek
posted by roosterboy at 3:49 AM on July 3, 2020 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Here's the Liddell and Scott entry for it.

My understanding is that it's not taught in the usual list of case endings for two reasons. First, it combines with a complete noun that's already marked for case (unlike the usual case endings, which attach to a stem). And second, it only combines with certain nouns, not with every noun in a predictable way.

(i.e., in your quote,

"Are you sure it exists for Carthage?" said Camilla.
I hadn't thought of this. "Maybe not," I said. "I know it does for Athens".)

A genitive exists for every noun. So does an accusative, a dative, and so on. Whether they're regularly or irregularly marked, they exist. The –δε form only exists for a few nouns.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:50 AM on July 3, 2020 [9 favorites]

Yes. Except for οἴκαδε, it is also uncommon in the group of texts (largely fourth-century Attic) most commonly taught to beginner/intermediate learners. I think we just learned a few forms as adverbs in my own undergrad days.

The Greek in Secret History is basically accurate, but the depiction of teaching it is not. Not just because of Julian being such a character, but because, e.g., students at a level where they'd be doing the kind of exercises in that scene would not also have been reading the Agamemnon (a very difficult text) the prior year. Poetic license.
posted by praemunire at 8:00 AM on July 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Aha! Thank you all very much. That does make sense.

And yes, now that you mention it, it does seem a relatively easy exercise for what are meant to be advanced students studying very intensely and who have been at it for a few years. Certainly at an English university most classics programmes assume that you'd be able to do exercises like that before attending, let alone several years in so it is odd that the twins struggle with it (Bunny is a fool so not surprise there).

(and as you note, it's one thing to do exercises like this while you struggle through Xenophon and New Testament koine, doesn't make sense to still be doing them the year after doing Aeschylus.)
posted by atrazine at 8:58 AM on July 3, 2020

Certainly at an English university most classics programmes assume that you'd be able to do exercises like that before attending

I think even most classics majors in US universities only start Greek in college, though the equivalent level of Latin proficiency could be expected.
posted by praemunire at 9:32 AM on July 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I agree about Greek. And in fact, there are a lot of US classics majors who start without even knowing any Latin.

Generally at US liberal arts schools, either something is a universal admissions requirement (you can't get in at all, for any major, without a certain math and English background) or you're able to start from zero and still finish (people can get in with no Greek or Latin knowledge, decide they're interested in Classics during their first year, and finish a Classics degree by year four).
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:33 AM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: In fact, later in the book, just a semester after his peers are trying to construct a basic Greek sentence, one of his assignments is to translate some Pindar. Pindar is notoriously difficult.
posted by atrazine at 3:59 AM on July 7, 2020